


Gentle Hands Upon My Skin

by Shi_Toyu



Series: Of Mischief and Metal [10]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Tries to Help, Cats, Cuddling & Snuggling, Lokitty, M/M, Protective Bucky Barnes, Sleepy Cuddles, Stress Relief, Talking, Teddy Bears, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs Sleep, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-12 01:52:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7915867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shi_Toyu/pseuds/Shi_Toyu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James tries to help Tony take his mind off things long enough to sleep. It doesn't go quite as he planned it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gentle Hands Upon My Skin

The bed dipped beside him, but Tony didn’t lift his head from the pillow. He knew it could only be one of his two lovers. JARVIS would have warned him otherwise. The sheets were pulled down his back, impeded only by the cat who was curled up by Tony’s hip, before kisses began to be placed along his spine. The scrape of stubble told him exactly who had joined him.

“James,” he hummed, wiggling closer. “I thought you wanted me to sleep.”

The ex-assassin nipped his shoulder lightly, a metal hand coming up to stroke his side.

“You aren’t sleeping, though. You’ve just been laying here for the past hour attempting to suffocate yourself with your pillow.”

Tony let out a grumble of discontent.

“Can’t sleep,” he admitted, finally turning over so he could look up at his lover. The black cat beside him yawned mightily before glaring at them both with poison green eyes. “I’ve got too much on my mind.”

James gave him a look that was half sympathetic and half a scowl.

“I know,” he finally settled on, leaning down to kiss Tony softly. “I thought you might be able to use a distraction.”

Tony wound his arms around the back of James’s neck and allowed himself to be pulled into the other’s lap.

“You’re too sweet, you giant teddy bear.”

James palmed Tony’s ass through his sleep pants, giving one cheek a generous squeeze.

“It’s nothing less than you deserve.”

Tony captured his lips in another kiss.

“Alright, Teddy. I’m all yours. Have your way with me.”

James smiled and lowered Tony slowly back to the bed, following him down and shifting to lay beside him. He mouthed at Tony’s shoulder while stroking the genius’s abdomen gently. Already, Tony could feel the stirrings of arousal in his cock but he knew this wasn’t something that would be over quickly.

James and Loki were total opposites as lovers, like fire and ice. Loki was all passion and kink and _oh, holy hell_ while James took his time, drew it out while staying infuriatingly calm and collected while he drove Tony out of his mind. Tony still wasn’t sure how he’d ever gotten so lucky as to bag them both. The cat padded away to the other side of the bed before curling up again, flicking his tail in irritation. Tony reached out for him.

“No, Lokitty! Don’t go!”

James huffed an amused breath.

“Do you really want him witnessing this?”

Tony’s nose wrinkled at the thought.

“No, you’re right… He’s just so warm and fuzzy!”

He reached out to nudge Lokitty gently with his big toe, but the cat didn’t budge. James frowned at the furball.

“I think he’s taking after his namesake. You know he pooped in Steve’s combat boots last week. Crawled all the way into them or something to get it right near the toes, I don’t even know. He didn’t realize until it was too late.”

Tony snorted.

“He’s a little hellion, that one.”

Lokitty’s previous owner was an older, homeless woman Tony always bought a sandwich for when he went out to his favorite coffee shop. He’d tried to set her up with an apartment at least six different times but she always refused. She’d just come up and pressed the flea-infested, too-skinny cat that always followed her into Tony’s arms one day. “I’m not gonna be around much longer,” she’d said. “He needs someone who can look after him.”

“He’ll leave when he wants to,” James decided out loud as he returned to lavishing Tony’s skin with attention. “If we kick him out, he’ll just meow at the door until we let him back in.”

Tony hummed in agreement, settling back into the bed. He kicked the last of the blankets away with his legs.

“And here I thought you were the patient one,” he teased.

Bucky nipped his collarbone.

“Not as much as that cat.”

Tony couldn’t disagree. Instead, he tugged at James’s shirt.

“Hey, c’mere,” he said, pulling his lover into another kiss.

It was slow, unhurried, and that was exactly what Tony wanted it to be. Things had been so crazy lately, with everything that had happened. There’d still been villains and business meetings and galas on top of all the drama that’d been happening in the tower. Tony felt like he hadn’t been able to get a second to breathe. If he wasn’t out doing something, he was having to train or work down in the shop. Loki and James had been making a valiant effort at making sure he ate and slept, but he hadn’t been resting well. There was too much going on, too much he had to think about.

His conversation with Natasha still weighed heavily on him. She hadn’t been kind or minced her words, which was exactly what Tony had been looking for. He’d needed the truth but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. She was right, though. He had to figure out whether or not he could still trust his team, and to what extent.

Bruce, and the Hulk by extension, Tony knew he could trust. There was no hesitation and no question there. If anything, Tony might actually trust the Hulk more than he did Bruce. The doctor would let fear get in his way. If he thought he might hurt someone, he’d make a run for it, no matter the progress he’d made since joining the team. Tony wished Bruce could trust _himself_ as much as Tony trusted him.

Thor, too, was someone Tony trusted to have his back, at least most of the time. Thor didn’t always understand ‘Midgardian’ ways and that could cause some misunderstandings, but he always tried. That made a big difference. Plus, he’d been the one to talk to Steve. Tony wasn’t so sure he could trust Thor with the secret of Loki _also_ being in the tower but, short of that, he was a pretty cool guy. They were definitely at the top of Tony’s lis-

“You’re thinking again,” James complained, grumbling. “Stop that.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t be thinking so much if you were doing more to distract me.”

James responded by swinging his legs over Tony’s hips and sitting back, careful to keep most of his weight on his knees. That metal arm was _heavy_.

“Mission accepted.”

Hands, one flesh and one metal, stroked along Tony’s sides, thumbs ghosting across his nipples. The contact was just enough for his body to get interested but not enough to stoke his smoldering arousal into a full fire. James’s eyes were dark and hungry as they bore into him. He looked every bit as dangerous as he truly was. Kind of like Natasha.

Tony wasn’t so sure he could trust her. Well, obviously he trusted her or he never would have gone to her to have that talk. He just wasn’t sure he trusted her to be on his side or to have his back. Natasha was going to reach her objective, whatever it took, that’s just who she was. He didn’t exactly _blame_ her for it. Just like he didn’t blame Clint for his part in all of it. Tony totally got feeling guilty and scared and having it go south when you were just trying to set things right.

Tony yelped when his nipple was pinched. He scowled up at James.

“What was that for?”

James just grinned at him.

“Sorry, I was looking for the off button.”

Tony sighed. Every scrap of his arousal had died. Sometimes he really, really did not like his brain.

“No, I’m sorry. I just-“ he cut himself off, throwing his arm up over his face. “I can’t get any of this shit out of my mind. I know you wanted to, and I do too, but I don’t think I can-“

“Don’t worry about it,” James said, sighing himself as he plunked back down beside him. “Loki’s better at removing you immediately from your head. I’m better at keeping you out of it. We’ll tag team when he gets back.”

Just the thought sent a little shiver down Tony’s spine. He rolled to rest his head against James’s shoulder, the metal arm shifting to curl around him and pull him closer.

“I’m sorry,” Tony says again, because he feels like he needs to. “I _want_ to.”

“I know,” James answers, leaning in to press a kiss to Tony’s forehead. “I don’t blame you. I just wish I could help.”

“You being here helps,” Tony confided. “You and Loki both. I know it’s been difficult lately, with everything.”

James hummed, his fingers tracing gentle patterns across Tony’s skin. Lokitty came wandering back up the mattress, sniffing at their legs along the way.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Tony mulled it over while Lokitty settled back in against his lower back, a comforting warmth.

“I don’t know who I can trust,” he finally said. “I mean, they’re my _team_ but they still… I just keep going round and round in circles. Steve and Clint both clearly feel so bad over what happened but they still _did it._ What am I supposed to do with that?”

James nodded gravely.

“You want to trust them, but you’re not sure you can.”

“If they did it once, what’s to stop them from doing it again?” Tony agreed. “It was one thing when I thought it was _my fault_. I just… I couldn’t even consider that they’d been wrong. They’re too _good._ ”

James growled.

“That’s not the word I’d use.”

Tony smacked him lightly.

“Not the point. I get that you and Lo’ tried to talk to me about it and you understood what had happened but… God, James, Captain America was my _hero_ growing up. Even after meeting Steve and knowing there was a real, imperfect person behind all that, I still had those rose-tinted glasses on. I got that Steve could be an ass and that he was wrong as much as he was right but I didn’t _get it_. He’s Captain America, for God’s sakes!”

James hummed and nodded.

“It’s tough,” he allowed. “I grew up with the guy and it’s hard for me. He was never just a kid from Brooklyn. There’s just something about him. But you’re also right about him being an ass and wrong as often as he’s right. Stevie’s always going to stick to his guns. It’s part of why I was so pissed about him attacking you and then continuing to attack you. I knew he wouldn’t stop unless something stopped him. That’s the kind of guy he is.”

Tony wiggled in closer, Lokitty sliding down to get wedged in the small space between Tony’s body and the mattress.

“So what am I supposed to do? How does that help?”

“I don’t know,” James admitted. “I don’t have all the answers. Hell, Tony, I barely have any answers. Before, when I was just Bucky, I would have followed Stevie into the pits of Hell and never looked back. He was all I had. Now? The world is so much bigger than I ever imagined it to be. I’m out of my depth and the only reason I’ve made it through at all is because of you and Loki.”

“So, what? Now you’d follow _us_ into the pits of Hell and never look back?”

“Pretty sure Loki would insist we call it Helheim,” James said with a grin, tilting Tony’s head up to kiss him, “but yeah. In a heartbeat.”

Tony couldn’t help the soppy grin that slipped onto his face.

“Teddy bear. A big, giant, fluffy teddy bear.”

“The point is,” James continued, batting lightly at the fingers Tony was using to gently tickle the soldier’s ribs, “that times change and life changes. Maybe you don’t have to decide right this very second if you trust them or not. Maybe you don’t trust them at all and you wait for them to earn it back. Maybe you give them an inch and wait to see if they take a mile.”

Tony’s jaw cracked with a huge yawn as he settled back down.

“Maybe you’re right,” he murmured, letting his eyes slip shut. “Right now I think I need a nap. Thanks for the distraction.”

He drifted off to the feeling of metal fingers in his hair and the rumble of a cat’s purr.

**Author's Note:**

> GIVE ME YOUR COMMENTS!


End file.
